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programmerhumor·Programmer Humorbyquazar

TIL about the greek question mark ;;;;;;;;;;

TIL about the greek question mark

Tell me, can you tell the difference between these two characters?

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

View original on lemmy.world
qaz
lemmy.world

Every syntax highligher shows this and VSCode even has a special case for this, this is not a real issue.

122

I just tried and it just turns into a proper semicolon and everything works. (Sublime Text).

That might explain that:

In Unicode, it is separately encoded as U+037E ; GREEK QUESTION MARK, but the similarity is so great that the code point is normalised to U+003B ; SEMICOLON, making the marks identical in practice.

55
ttrpg.network

Like r/programmerhumor, this community is already full of people who literally never programmed anything more than Hello World before.

112
discuss.tchncs.de

And just like Reddit you're complaining about it for absolutely no reason. How about we try to be a bit more welcoming and a bit less gatekeepery.

61

That's kind of an absurd position when the explicit purpose of segmented communities is to gatekeep content.

8
ttrpg.network

I realize my attitude is negative, but r/programmerhumor was not my crowd and it looks like neither is this community. There is no place where I can find memes about a large part of my life and I'm frustrated.

"Missing semicolon", "light IDE is for psychopaths", "JS sucks", "AI is just if-statements", I just can't relate to those jokes and after the 100th repost I still don't think they're funny.

1
fredreply

Your contribution appears to be solely whinging. If you want a certain type of content how about you post some and see if it catches on?

10
CanadaPlusreply
lemmy.sdf.org

I'm curious, what would you prefer? Reposts suck, but dunking on the languages everyone agrees are bad and complaining about debugging is the only version of programmer humour I'm familiar with.

8

See, that just sounds like the same joke but done better to me. It boils down to "JS bad", only through the lens of the weird exception that makes the rule.

3

I realize my attitude is negative, but r/programmerhumor was not my crowd and it looks like neither is this community.

Sounds like a win for this community.

-2

programming hello world is doing better than most people and I applaud and welcome beginners.

I am little more than an amateur myself, entirely self taught, and yet I'm forever digging into various bits of code for my marketing job, because paying someone $400 to fix a recalcitrant css style in a week and a half is worse than just doing it myself.

11

Who the hell tries putting Greek question marks in their code? Like, I get most compilers will show you what character each error starts at, but still.

2
feddit.de

I get this warning in my IDE (VS Code) so I feel safe:

The character U+037e ";" could be confused with the ASCII character U+003b ";", which is more common in source code.

97
XTornadoreply
lemmy.ml

Well, there goes my diabolical plan, crushed like a bug under someone else's shoe. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

36
Comment105reply
lemm.ee

Would be weird to be crushed like a bug under anyone else than someone else's or simply put your own shoe.

3
feddit.de

Laughs in just removing all semicolons because it's not necessary in JS.

47
Andrewreply
mander.xyz

It is recommended. But in TS it is not necessary with rare exceptions.

3
Platypusreply
sh.itjust.works

That's what's really irks me be about JS--you can do just about whatever but you're not supposed to.

It's an imperative language, but best practices are to use it functionally.

You can omit semicolons, but best practices are to use them.

You can use sloppy equality, but best practices are to always use strict.

19

JavaScript reminds me of an older brother who happens to be the most laid back stoner you could meet. "Like yea man, you should probably use semicolons, but I ain't gonna narc"

18
fidodoreply
lemm.ee

After switching to typescript with linting and prettier I simply hate writing vanilla JavaScript anymore. Some people complain about the extra project setup needed but I find that time pays for itself immediately.

9
Andrewreply
mander.xyz

Extra project setup like pnpm add -D typescript && tsc --init? One thing that is kinda annoying is that you have to manage were will js files go.

0
fidodoreply
lemm.ee

And eslint and setting up tsconfig for your project structure.

2

Why do the typescript extensions to eslint exist then?

1
fidodoreply
lemm.ee

I'll add that to my mountain of reasons for using typescript

5
fidodoreply
lemm.ee

I wouldn't do it without an auto formatter. With prettier it will catch potential no semi colon issues.

4

You absolutely have to use prettier with JS. I don't think there is auto adding missing semicolons in C/C++ though, it would be very useful.

1
DrMreply
feddit.de

thanks to eslint enforcing it in the default rules it's necessary for most typescript projects

4
Nato Boramreply
lemm.ee

Except that you should use Prettier for formatting instead of ESLint. That said, semicolons are useless noise

4
fidodoreply
lemm.ee

It adds even more auto formatting rules so you can basically stop thinking about formatting entirely. I used to be opinionated about formatting but now I just go with whatever prettier does. It's not always the best but it's consistent and it's a big chunk of my brain I can free up for things that matter. It also formats things safely so you don't run into those weird edge cases where semicolons matter if you choose to turn them off.

3

Maybe there's some edge case but in my years of using prettier I haven't encountered one once.

3

Never used eslint. prettier is a must. semicolons are only needed to split some rare TS syntax lines.

1

Yes, true. I also did setup so that any missing semicolon will be added, because I got sick of not inserting them sometimes and then some code was without them and some was. (Before I tested just leaving them all out, out of fun, so I got into the habit of just leaving them out regularly)

1

Вгь, Iмa gо sрrinкlе sоме cугilliс снаггастегs аll оvег sомеоnе's lаrаvеl vаlidатiоn гules

(The аеос's are the most evil ones)

12

I thought zero width whitespace characters were the ones to go for if you want to be evil.

11
lemmy.world

Why did Unicode even allow these symbols even exist? What happened to using a single encoding for similar symbols like in CJK? Uriel must be rolling furiously in his grave rn

9
Squidsreply
sopuli.xyz

Because the point of unicode is to accurately depict every sort of writing regardless of format, not to make a neat table of every unique glyph. Fonts may want to render the two differently or treat them differently. Same reason why there's a difference between an em dash and a quotation line mark

Same reason why unicode is full of random characters that only ever appear like thrice in some Russian coptic manuscript from the 3rd century - it's about being able to depict something, not perceived usefulness

Also excuse my ignorance, but who's Uriel? Because right now I just have the mental image of a very upset archangel which I'm guessing is not what you're referring to. I mean it could be - I'm pretty sure unicode would fall under his domain of literature

37

every sort of writing regardless of format

💯💯😹👁️👄👁️ well 👏👏 said! 🍌🍑💦🫄🏻🎉🎉

11

Use both the latin x and the cyrillic х as variable names in the same scope. Your coworkers will thank you.

7
lemmy.one

The Greek question mark is a fraction of a mm thicker. :)

I got used to seeing the same thing between O and 0 in certain fonts. O is wider than 0.

3
d3Xt3rreply
lemmy.nz

Cool, but can you spot the difference between I and I?

5

lI makes it pretty simple to see - uppercase i is just a tad shorter.

3

Hah, I will know it’s an error as I hardly use semicolons in JS. #rekt

2
dog
suppo.fi

Who even uses semicolons in 2023?

-22
dogreply
suppo.fi

Do Rust, Nim, etc use semicolons? I don't remember

-1

Rust does. But you get:

error: unknown start of token: \u{37e}
 --> test.rs:2:30
  |
2 |     println!("Hello, World!");
  |                              ^
  |
help: Unicode character ';' (Greek Question Mark) looks like ';' (Semicolon), but it is not
  |
2 |     println!("Hello, World!");
11
dogreply
suppo.fi

Fairly sure they just use IDE's.

Or chatgpt.

1

Pretty sure your Java code would be unreadable using blocks inside blocks for each statement to avoid semicolons

1